For example, in the case of a care recipient who lives with home-visit nursing care services at home, the care recipient communicates with a home-visit nursing care company that provides the home-visit nursing care services, a care manager who manages the home-visit nursing care services, rehabilitation facilities, a hospital, and a nursing care taxi company to have a nursing care service plan prepared so that the nursing care services are provided according to the planned schedule.
There is a support system for supporting such home/home-visit nursing care, where a video camera, a microphone, and a display unit, as well as a communications unit for transmitting an image signal captured by the video camera and an audio signal detected with the microphone to a center and receiving an image signal and an audio signal transmitted from the center and a control unit to control apparatuses, are set up in a care recipient's room so as to connect the care recipient's room and a server on the center side in a communicable manner. (See, for example, Patent Document 1 listed below.)
Further, there is a videoconference system for videoconferencing through the Internet by multiple conference participants at distant locations, where a camera, a microphone, a loudspeaker, a display unit, a communications unit for transmitting and receiving an image signal and an audio signal, and a control unit to control apparatuses are disposed in the room of each conference participant so as to transmit an image signal and an audio signal to a conference server through a communication line and receive an image signal and an audio signal from another conference participant. (See, for example, Patent Document 2 listed below.)